King of All I Survey-Chapter 213: Celina Embraces her Power
Rafael excused himself to attend to other important matters for the duration of the time they would be under the canopy today. Celina was conflicted when he left. On the one hand, his presence was magnetic. She wanted to be around him, to talk with him, to… she didn't let her think of how she might have finished that sentence. On the other hand, the very intensity that she found so compelling was, well, just a lot. Being near him was emotionally exhausting. She definitely needed a break from that, a chance to get lost in the study of the Ceiba sap slugs and trees.
She tried to do just that, but throughout the rest of the day she found herself thinking about Rafael's words. 'If there's something you want in life, just fucking take it,' he had told her. She found herself thinking about all the times she had backed down from a confrontation and ended up watching someone else take what she wanted. She had told herself she was being magnanimous, generous, thoughtful toward others, but… Damn, if she had just taken what she wanted all those times, she would have… almost everything she ever wanted. Men do it all the time, she thought. Is that why women tend to be underrepresented in leadership positions? Not me. Not anymore, she resolved. She watched for a time as the sap slug, slowly shrank in volume. 'Just take what you want,' she heard the words over and over in her head.
"Drone:" she said, at last, "continue scanning and recording the sap slug until it can no longer be differentiated from the frond vein." She didn't know if she had the authority to give orders to the drone, but it accepted her command. "Ask my permission to discontinue this task first, if someone other than Rafael issues a conflicting command."
"Acknowledged, Celina," the drone replied on tight beam audio. She felt a smile start to form on her face and she pulled it back, she could feel good, but to everyone else, her exercising authority shouldn't look like something new or special, she thought. With her hand-held scanner, she began studying the Ceiba tree root system. How much did the older trees support the new ones, she wondered. She performed detailed scans of the nutrient and water flow between the mature trunks and from there to the new shoot beside the opening.
Hector was already studying the new tree shoot, when she got there. She had been focused on following the root system and hadn't even looked up to notice he was there, until he spoke.
"Celina, I just saw the sap slug data Rafael flagged in the system for the Ceiba tree research team. That was an incredible discovery. Amazing," he said, smiling at her.
She smiled back, "Yes, thank you. I guess I was studying the Ceiba tree the whole time without realizing it."
He chuckled, "I guess so. If you're interested, I could ask Rafael if I could add you to the Ceiba research team."
Her smiled faded abruptly. She tilted her head as if confused. She looked Hector straight in the eye, refusing to let the discomfort force her to look away. "Didn't he tell you?"
He shook his head, "tell me what? Did he already assign you to the team? That's great!"
She smiled, "He put me in charge of it," she paused as she saw his smile disappear as fast as hers had a moment ago. The old Celina would have felt bad, and probably wouldn't have mentioned it at all, until Rafael and Hector had spoken. The new Celina felt powerful and confident. "Don't worry, it's still your project, too. We both going to lead the team together." 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦
She saw him trying to figure out what that meant for his status. Finally, he put on a smile that seemed a little fake to her. Clearly, he wasn't happy about sharing the team leadership, but he seemed determined to put on a happy face and make the best of it. Good, because he doesn't have a choice, Celina thought to herself.
He put his hand out to shaker hers, "Well, welcome to the team. We should probably go over the scope and resource proposal I've been working on after we get back inside. It's due tomorrow."
She shook his hand, "Yes, we should get that finished up. I'd hate for our first assignment to be late."
Hector nodded with a smile that was more genuine. "Right? I've made a lot of progress, but in light of the sap slug discovery, there will need to be changes."
Meanwhile, Rafael's attention was on the site he had chosen for the building platform. The vegetation surrounding the cleared and paved area had not really made a significant effort to claim the space back. Scans showed that once any shoots below the paving contacted it and met resistance against further upward growth, they seemed to just stop trying. There was new growth around the edges, but not much.
His hand-held scanner showed no residue of slugs or any other creatures having traversed the carbon nanotube matrix surface during the night. He summoned the fabricator. It floated along the path from the storage building through the canopy entrance and over to Rafael, dodging researchers along the way. "Fabricator: use this site for Residence Building Plan A5. Then create an arched tunnel covering the pathway from the main buildings through the canopy entrance to a distance of twenty feet inside. Add lighting that remains off unless triggered by motion, coordinate with the Ri Ja AI to find a visible wavelength that does not trigger heliotropic behavior in the Ri Ja plants."
"Acknowledged, estimated time to completion is 32 hours for the A5 residence to be completed," the fabricator replied.
Rafael frowned, then shrugged, "I guess we won't be moving into the canopy tonight after all." As the fabricator began its construction, Rafael made the rounds to the other researchers who were all scanning and observing various plants or fungus-like things inside the canopy. He had set new ground rules for today. Everyone was allowed to go off the path, but no further than one-hundred meters from the entrance. Their personal communicators would ping them if they approached the limit. While most were in the area closest to the curtain wall where the profusion of plant life was greatest, there were some scattered throughout the area, and just a few exploring the far perimeter of the allowed area, sending their scans as far as they could reach into the deeper understory.
Animal life seemed to be largely avoiding the paved areas and seemed to have no interest in the researchers themselves. Nevertheless, the researchers managed to scoop up a few of the slower moving ones into field traps adding to the collection sent back to the labs for full analysis. So far nothing much larger than a big beetle had been captured with the exception of the sap slug.
In mid-afternoon, Rafael sent the return signal to all the communicators, and the team began finishing up their tasks and heading back toward the entrance. As he waited for the entire group to arrive, he noticed Celina and Hector were looking at their hand-held scanners and talking animatedly about the results. To his eye, and he was a very good judge of people, they seemed to harbor no ill will toward each other. Instead, it seemed they were both enjoying the thrill of discovery, finding kindred spirits in each other to discuss and speculate about the nature of the Ceiba trees and the sand slugs. He let a small smile show on his face. Good, that might be a very effective team for him. Hopefully, they would choose the rest of their team carefully and build on that.
As far as Rafael was concerned, the Ceiba trees were the singular most important project on Ri Ja. Trees that could actually terraform worlds would be incredibly valuable, not just in terms of money, but strategically as well. The world that controlled them, and by extension, its leader, would be able to reap the benefits of that power.
He looked around then checked his communicator readout. Everybody was here, time to go. He raised a hand for attention, "OK! Same procedure as yesterday. As we leave the canopy switch your shields to a momentary repulsor field to make sure you're not carrying any biologicals or toxins out of here. Then, before we go inside the buildings, we'll do it again. Hold it on until you're inside the building shield. The building AI should be able to filter anything with the building shield, but I don't want to take any chances. All samples remain inside containment fields if they are brought inside the buildings- for the entire course of your study. Not one molecule is ever exposed in the buildings without a containment field around it. No accidents, no excuses. Double and triple check everything. We'll maintain a strict internal quarantine indefinitely. Tomorrow, I'll be sending only a single small expedition inside the canopy, a mapping and exploring unit to range out as far as we can and look for any changes in conditions compared to the perimeter here."
He looked around through the group, noted all the faces. "Most of you will be remaining in the buildings to work on the analysis of what we've already found. A few of you, will be on the expedition team with me tomorrow."
He met Celina's eyes for a second. He had just decided to add her to the exploration group. In the event that there was anything new to learn about the trees further away from the perimeter, it would be good to have one of the Ceiba team leaders along.
